Be strong, wild and joyful.

Each heart-made piece is handcrafted and one-of-a-kind. Inspired by the Japanese Mahayana Buddhist philosophy of Wabi-sabi, we believe that true beauty comes from all that's imperfect. Essentially, the "perfection" lies in all the things we often feel are "imperfect" about ourselves. 

"Wabi" connotes a meditative understanding that the marks we acquire in life — be it on our skin or on our soul — add to the uniqueness and elegance of who we are. "Sabi" is the idea that serenity comes with age, where we learn about how the impermanence of everything encourages us to be in the moment and cherish it more. 

Together, Wabi-Sabi is the material representation of everything Zen. Rather than becoming lost in unnecessary thoughts and worries, we can choose to surround ourselves by what is natural, changing, and unique to connect us to all that's real and meaningful in the Universe. 

Every piece is also intended to be a celebration and a reminder of how beautiful each individual truly is — exactly as we are right now. It's an experience of truth! And, I personally infuse each creation with loving Reiki energy to ensure that you will always have something close to your heart as that's filled with unconditional healing care.

Eventually, our store will host a wide array of products that support and supplement our workshops. Please visit as often as you'd like and share the news! In the meantime, I hope you'll take a peek and purchase if you'd like. :)

May each and every one of us always love what we do, no matter how big or medium or small.

I'm happy to say that I'm returning to my own Prakruti and loving it. It's an ever-evolving process, one where you start to feel more comfortable in your own skin. And the less we can look externally for validation, then the more we start to feel it sprout up from our own hearts, minds, and souls. I love my life the way it is now, and all the opportunities that are ahead. I've worked damn hard to get to this point on many levels, and while I can't predict what the future will hold, it's always nice to hear that things will be sunny from here on out.

Our will is more powerful than we know. Honor your will and live true.

***

Have you had experiences with psychics before? Have they told you things that became self-fulfilling prophecies, because they planted a seed in your mind that you allowed to grow? What seeds can you plant for yourself, then water and nourish to see things flourish?

1. Begin in Table Pose with the wrists beneath the shoulders, knees beneath the hips.

I want the noise, because it prevents me from finding the quiet space to grow into my fullest potential. Right now, Hawk and Lily is doing wonderfully! There are so many great directions in which my business is growing that I'm overjoyed at the opportunities. I'm working with talented individuals to not only make my dreams, but all of our greatest hopes, come true. And, because of all this goodness, I am encountering old habits of self-sabotage.

A lot of us do this. Marianne Williamson and Nelson Mandela have both made references to this trait of human behavior, that we're not afraid of what we can't do; instead, we're intimidated by all of our greatest potential. We wonder if we're truly worthy. We question if we can do it. In the book, Forty Rules of Love - A Novel of Rumi, Shams (the often unknown inspiration for much of Rumi's poetry), shares:

"Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That's the hardest part and that's what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow."


All we ever really have to worry about is what's right in front of us. And maybe, because it's so simple (which is not to say that it's easy), our brains try to make it more complex. I don't have to worry about the outcome of things. I simply bring my best self forward, however that shows up in this moment today, and then create a clear intention of wanting to be of service, that the rest is a practice of faith and trust and letting go.

I once heard a business philosophy that shared how success comes from follow-through. Just that. Many people have phenomenal ideas, but it's the follow-through that actually transforms thought into reality. We all have the capacity to be great encoded within us, but how we decide to unlock that gift and bring it into the world is up to us.

"I can do this," I tell myself. Every time I brush my teeth, I stand in front of the mirror and look directly into my own eyes and repeat affirmations to myself the way that I would encourage a friend. "I am doing the best that I can in every given moment. I can do this!"

We all have doubts. We all have fears. We all feel alone sometimes. It's part of the human condition, and it's the flip-side to all the other emotions that we also experience... confidence, security, connection. The more that I can admit that I'm just like everyone else, then the more we can all be encouraged to embrace how special we also are.

When one of us thrives, we all thrive.

***

What "noise" are you putting in your own way as an obstacle to your dreams? What secrets do you keep to yourself that you think only you are suffering from? How can you take one step today towards your own power?

Today, I was asked by a friend whether I follow the "8 Limbs of Yoga," a framework for living a moral life. Most people don't realize that the physical asana made so popular by our contemporary culture is just one of the limbs on this spiritual tree as put forth by Patanjali, who is attributed to creating these 8 steps of yoga to help unite body, mind and spirit. Ultimately, physical asana was designed so that we could sit for longer periods of meditation to cultivate a greater connection to the Divine within us.

The 8 limbs are delineated as:

1. Yama: Universal morality (includes Ahimsa, Satya, Asteya, Brahmacharya, Aparigraha)
2. Niyama: Personal observances (includes Sauca, Santosa, Tapas, Svadhyaya, Isvapranidhara)
3. Asanas: Body postures
4. Pranayama: Breathing exercises and control of prana
5. Pratyahara: Control of the senses
6. Dharana: Concentration and cultivating inner perceptual awareness
7. Dhyana: Devotion, meditation on the Divine
8. Samadhi: Union with the Divine

I came across a Huffington Post article a couple of days ago about self-criticism that I really liked for these reasons:

• Shift from perfectionistic thinking to "possible thinking"
• "Give your inner critic a name (preferably a silly one)"
• "Pick up the phone"
• "Embrace your imperfections"

I was listening to this story on NPR this morning and thought it was absolutely wonderful. The call of destiny for a woman across the world to return to Ghana and become her village's king — not a queen, but the king!

May we all answer the call to live up to our fullest potential and live a life unimagined in incredible ways.

I could not have picked a better partner — someone who shows me that it's not all about me. For so much of my life, I've been obsessed with making myself "whole" again, as though I've been this broken and fragmented individual who needs to fix inherent traits about myself in order to receive love. It's just now settling in that I'm not dysfunctional or irreparable, but that I'm innately human. And perhaps, that's the hardest realization to come to, because being human means being vulnerable to pain, to change, to circumstances beyond my control. It's all the things I tried to escape throughout most of my childhood into young adulthood, and here again, I'm faced with the reality of what it means to live and be in relationships with other human beings.

In the end, we're all in our own spheres of consciousness that happen to merge with one another like soapy bubbles in the sky. Sometimes we pop when we meet one another, sometimes we become attached and float on together and other times, we soar into the ether completely on our own. Each of us is a world of wonder in and of itself. Yet, I've been so cooped up in the iridescent sheen of the viewpoint I hold about our relationship — and what I need him to give to me — that I haven't seen what it really is that he also needs in turn. Because my entire life has centered around tender emotions or introspective interpretations of outside events, and because I feel I've been unjustly wronged before, whether caused by him or by others in my life, then I began to react in heart-jerk ways rather than respond with real consideration for him as a person or as a partner.

Lately, I've shared with a select few people the thoughts in my head, the feelings in my heart, the dialogues I've had with my partner. And, the input that I've been receiving is: "You should thank him for being the soul who volunteered to come help you grow," and "It's amazing the types of dialogue you have with one another — your communication is incredible," and "You've got to love yourself first before you can truly know how to love anyone else. Both of you just want the other person to be happy, but it starts first and foremost with knowing what it is that you want."

Then why doesn't it feel like the best of all things is happening? Why does it feel so incredibly uncomfortable and annoying? After an argument he and I got into yesterday, I confessed that I feel as though I've been pulling away, shutting down, and looking for a way out.

"I can tell," he told me, "it's as though you placed your heart in an origami envelope and now we need to peel away the pieces of paper away, one at a time."

One of the challenges that we've broached before is that I live in a world where I'm slightly removed, one where I can process things in an almost narrative fashion, that helps me write my book. Rather than being fully present, I'm just present enough to observe and interpret rather than be in the moment. While I've thought that most of what I've been working on is to better our relationship (i.e., being tolerant of another person's anger and opinions), what I believe I've been doing is simply picking and choosing on working on the things that are seemingly most challenging, yet would ultimately benefit mostly me and my memoir. It really hasn't been about him or us.

"What does an apology mean to you?" he asked yesterday, after we sat in the car in intense frustration at one another. "What does forgiveness mean?"

Though initially I thought he was asking this as a way to catch me being wrong so that he could be right, what he was really bringing to light is the fact that I have never, ever truly forgiven anyone. "I feel like you make apologies just to get past the moment," he observed, "but instead of letting it go, you just try to bring it back around in another way at another time, so that you can still make your point."

A long time ago, I read that forgiveness involves an element of forgetting. My memory is so selective that this amnesia works in a way where I simply cut and splice previous experiences in a way that puts me as the heroine, the victim, the one who's not at fault. I cannot yet own my mistakes, because I've felt that the message I received loud and clear while growing up is that it wasn't purely my actions and behaviors that were wrong, it was my entire soul and spirit. So, with that enormous wound still on the mend deep beneath the surface, why would I ever choose to be in any adult situation where something I did was construed as unfair, unkind, or inconsiderate?

"I think that in the end, you'd really just like a relationship with yourself. You want someone who you can control, who will say and do just the right things as you would like them to do. And that's not how our dynamic works. We're two alphas here, and that could work, if we just learn how to yield now and again."

Yielding, to me, is submission and not being honored. I've learned that fighting to be right is what I know how to do best and compromising is a concept worthy of consideration, but one I both don't know how and don't necessarily want to grasp. Instead, I want to be in control, I want it all or nothing, just like my eating disorder used to demand. It's either become a perfect size 0 or binge until my stomach is so distended that I can no longer breathe.

Everything that annoys me about him are so clearly things that I'm annoyed with about myself and it's the same exact case with how he sees me as a mirror, too. The difference lies in the fact that he chooses to accept the "not-so-great," because he tells me that the good far outweighs it. He says that our relationship is real. And I? I still want — and am demanding — perfection. It's not fitting into my idea of how things should be, and because of that, then I want to jump on the next plane out of town to the next adventure, the next distraction, the next illusory promise of getting everything I have ever wanted — until it's not anymore.

We got into an argument at his friend's baby shower yesterday, quietly making our own little "scene." Again, I wanted things on my terms, to be resolved right then, to be more important than the whole world around us and the very event and people we were there to celebrate. Am I proud of this? No. And yes, it takes two, but the whole entire play could have featured different dialogues and character exits and stage spotlights. Or, both of us simply could have chosen not to audition. But, we did and then did a bit of tit for tat.

All of this is to say that I am still learning how to be mature, how to be in a relationship that's not a replay of everything unjust that has ever transpired in my life, which I would now like to rectify with this ONE person, right here and now. I don't know what will happen between us, but I do know that at the end of an hours-long assertion of how each of us sees things, we went to get a drink and agreed:

"If we can get past this, then we have a pretty damn good shot. And, if we don't, then we both know we love each other a lot, and that we'll let the other person go to find what makes them most happy."

It might sound textbook, but it's anything but. We are two smart individuals who (maybe think too much and) are absolutely adapting to the dynamic of a relationship neither of us has experienced through before. While it's distinctly grown-up in many ways, it's also still an adolescent process of learning who we are, who we'd like to be, and who we'd like to be with.

I'm going to do my best to stop searching for someone else to tell me how to do it right, and trust that I have a partner with whom we're figuring it out as we go. It's not going to be easy and we're certain there are more arguments to come, but I certainly have found the person who will help me become a greater version of myself. And the same goes for him. That's a tit-for-tat worth fighting for.